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Survivors of Yamatai
"Survivors of Yamatai" is the third story in the Star Trek Online: Valkyries fan fiction series. It features main characters Carlin Agran (Drel) and Sam Hayashi from the stories "The Best Revenge" and "Airborne" respectively, as well as many of the characters from those stories. It is a novel-length story with 49 chapters and an epilogue. Much of the plot, setting, and characters of this story is based on the 2013 Tomb Raider game by Square Enix, as often referenced in the author's notes at the end of each chapter. Teaser When Sam, Carlin, and Antori Drel crash-land on an uncharted planet ruled over by a murderous cult of hardened survivors who worship the Sun Queen of ancient Japanese legend, they must discover the secrets of the mysterious world or be trapped on it forever. External Link "Survivors of Yamatai" on Fan Fiction.net Summary The story begins with Admiral Jorel Quinn of Starfleet Command assigning the to investigate an archaeological find made by a celebrity Ferengi scientist, Doctor Mor. Mor has found a rare isotope in pieces of ancient Japanese pottery that point to an origin somewhere in the impassible Dragon's Head Nebula, near the borders of Klingon, Romulan, and Federation space. Lieutenant Sam Hayashi and Doctor Mor are both transferred to the Nautilus for the duration of this mission. As Nautilus approaches the Dragon's Head Nebula, Sam and Carlin take time to catch up on all the changes in their lives since they were roommates at Starfleet Academy. Carlin has been promoted to Lieutenant and has been dating Commander Antori Drel for two years (since the events of "The Best Revenge"). Their relationship has become serious and she is considering proposing marriage. Sam, meanwhile, has mellowed somewhat, becoming less of a troublemaker, though she is still not ready to settle down. Their conversation is interrupted by the ship's arrival at the Dragon's Head Nebula and a call for a meeting of the ship's senior officers, which includes both of them. At the meeting, Doctor Mor details his find. The pottery is roughly two thousand years old and belongs to a period of ancient Japanese history when it experienced many sudden advancements under the reign of a legendary figure, the Sun Queen Himiko. Himiko was worshipped by the people and is said to have had magical powers, including the ability to control weather, and to have reigned from a place called Yamatai, which has never been discovered but which some of the legends indicate could be interstellar space. Doctor Mor gets several details of the legends wrong, including the pronunciation of Japan and Himiko's name, but Sam corrects him, revealing the legends to be her favorite childhood stories and the search for Yamatai to be a longstanding dream of hers. Based on the legend, the find, and scans of the nebula, it is determined that Yamatai could be an Class M planet located inside the nebula. A probe is launched to study the planet, and the following morning it reveals that the surface of the planet is mostly water and that some of its islands show signs of ancient ruins and spaceship crashes from every race and every era in the quadrant. Captain Sokar authorizes an away team consisting of Antori Drel, Carlin, Sam, and Doctor Mor to take a shuttle into the nebula to investigate the planet. The shuttle reaches the planet, but on achieving orbit it is caught in an ion storm. Sam desperately takes the shuttle down into the planet's atmosphere in hopes of evading the storm, but a thunderstorm in the atmosphere of the planet itself downs the damaged shuttle, causing it to crash just off the shore of the main island. The away team manages to swim to shore safely, but Sam is separated from the others and knocked out by an unknown assailant. Meanwhile, Brother John, a member of the Solarii—a violent cult of previous crash survivors—observes the Federation shuttle crash via a sensor and communications network installed in an abandoned Dominion communications base. He alerts Father Matan, the leader of the Solarii, so he can investigate the newcomers himself. Meanwhile, on the beach, Carlin and Antori realize that Sam, although lost, is most likely still alive. They decide to move inland and begin searching for her, taking Doctor Mor with them. Mor attempts to take along a large variety of useless luggage but is eventually forced to abandon it. In order to convince him to do so, Carlin repacks the contents of their two medkits into one, leaving behind the case of one medkit and (accidentally) a loaded hypospray as well. The away team makes it to a hilltop overlooking a forested valley and camps there, deciding that they will split up and search the valley the next day before reuniting at some ruins on the cliffs on the other side of the valley. Once split up, high levels of polaric radiation prevent the away team from making more than intermittent communications with each other via combadge, and limits the range of their tricorders to a few meters, hampering their search efforts. However Carlin is able to discover the remains of a Vorta and his log, which reveals the presence of a secret Dominion base/bases on the planet during the Dominion War and further states that the Dominion forces on the planet were wiped out by a sword-wielding enemy they called the Oni. Following a combadge's emergency transponder, Carlin finds the body of a young woman in a 24th century Starfleet uniform who was burned at the stake in ancient Japanese ruins preserved by polaric radiation. She also finds the bodies of human and a Romulan dumped in a swamp. On her way out of the swamp she falls and twists her ankle, attracting the attention of a Cardassian crash survivor who claims to be there to help. He reveals that his name is Matan. Elsewhere Sam regains consciousness and finds herself hanging upside down in a cave. She manages to break free, but in the process she is impaled through the side with a piece of rebar. Unable to contact the others due to the polaric radiation, she wraps the rebar to immobilize it while she attempts to escape from the cave and find medical attention. She discovers several bodies during her attempt to escape, including that of a Bajoran female who's corpse was hung up as a sort of shrine. She also inadvertently starts a cave in. As she runs through the tunnels to escape the cave in, a Bolian scavenger attacks her from behind and attempts to persuade her to return with him in exchange for a quick death, which "they" will not give her. She refuses and escapes the caves to a cliff above the beach while the Bolian is killed in the cave-in. Still in desperate need of medical attention, Sam stumbles upon the rest of the away team's trail, finding the abandoned medkit case and a hypospray, which is loaded with an antibiotic. She then falls and, unable to follow the away team further in her weakened state, makes camp at an abandoned fire ring in the forested valley. While there she treats her own wound by cauterizing it and injecting herself with the antibiotic. She also finds a quiver of arrows and a makeshift longbow on a decaying body. Due to her kyudo training, she is able to use the bow to hunt and kill a deer for food. Later she receives a brief communication from Antori. He has already reached the rendezvous point and tells Sam to join him and the others there. On her way, Sam comes upon the camp where Carlin and Matan are staying. Matan introduces himself as a harmless teacher and to prove it he has made a splint for Carlin's leg while the muscular regenerator repairs the sprain. He asks about the mission that brought them to the planet and Sam tells him the legend of Himiko until Carlin sedates her in order to more properly treat her wound. Matan takes advantage of this, waiting until Carlin has fallen asleep and then using a hidden communicator to call for the Solarii to beam away himself and Sam. When Carlin awakes in the middle of the night, she is alone. She searches for Sam and Matan but in the process becomes caught in a trap and is attacked by wolves. Having lost her phaser just before meeting Matan, she is forced to fight off the wolves using only the bow and arrows Sam found and brought to camp with her. Soon after, Doctor Mor comes upon her and Carlin uses his phaser to release herself from the trap. She returns to the camp and finds traces of energy from a Romulan transporter where Matan and Sam were beamed away. She and Mor then begin heading immediately for the rendezvous point to meet with Antori and determine their next course of action. While on their way, they discover a shrine with scavenged modifications and signs of recent use, indicating that someone on the island is still worshiping Himiko. Shortly thereafter, they run into a Solarii hunting party led by a Klingon named Vamdar. The Solarii trick Doctor Mor into disarming himself and then subdue him and Carlin, tying them up and dragging them into the ancient ruins of a mountain village, where they are still searching for Antori. Vamdar has a disagreement with one of the other Solarii and shoots him. In the ensuing chaos both Mor and Carlin escape into the ruins. The Solarii hunt for them and manage to corner and recapture Doctor Mor. Vamdar manages to find Carlin, but she fights him off and kills him with his own disruptor. Thus armed, Carlin heads for the rendezvous point killing or sedating any Solarii she cannot sneak around. She is eventually reunited with Antori, who has killed several Solarii himself and took some of their weapons and equipment before being attacked and bitten badly in the leg by wolves. Carlin manages to drag him back to a hidden camp and treat him there. The next morning, Sam awakens inside a Solarii prison cell made from the gutted hull of a Starfleet shuttlepod suspended from the roof of a cave. She manages to jury rig the engines to fire automatically some time later that evening by powering them with her tricorder. She is then confronted by Father Matan and Brother John who hold Doctor Mor hostage--despite his pleas that he will help them. Matan demands to know why Himiko's reign came to an end and Sam tells him the only story she knows that relates to the end of Himiko's reign. The story tells of a young priestess named Hoshi who was chosen to be the Sun Queen's successor, but found that Himiko was not human but instead an evil face-stealing spirit called a koh. When the koh tried to transfer itself to Hoshi, she thwarted it by killing herself, trapping the koh in the decaying body of the former queen. While Matan rejects certain elements of the tale as blasphemous, he seems to believe others and proclaims that Doctor Mor will help him find the Chamber of the Sun while Sam will endure the Ritual of Fire Meanwhile, Carlin and Antori have found the Dominion communications base the Solarii are using. They raid it in an effort to disrupt Solarii communications and get out a distress signal. The Solarii sabotage the control room and Antori's leg is injured, but Carlin manages to reach the maintenance panel at the top of the communications tower and broadcast a distress signal. A rescue shuttle from the Nautilus—''crewed by Doctor Howard, Ensign Alex McKensey, Lieutenant-Commander Rejes, and Crewman Maiava—picks up the signal and comes to prepares to beam up Carlin and Antori. Before they can, however, a sudden unnatural storm fueled by polaric ion discharges strikes down the shuttle. The crew beams out in time, but the polaric radiation scatters them across the island. Crewman Maiava beams down near Carlin's location but is quickly killed by the Solarii. The crash is observed by Sokar aboard the ''Nautilus and by an outdated Klingon bird-of-prey being operated by the Orion Syndicate: the [[OSS Cluros|OSS Cluros]]. The Orions believe they are witnessing an altercation between Starfleet and a group of natives with advanced polaric ion energy weapons and decide to kidnap any Starfleet survivors they can find in order to learn about the natives and steal the weapon for themselves. Sokar observes the Cluros heading for the planet and determines to allow it to approach the planet in hopes of learning from its success or failure whether the forces that brought down the rescue shuttle would be able to destroy the Nautilus as well. Meanwhile, Carlin meets back up with Antori and they together go to the wreckage of the crash site, interrupting a Solarii attempt to scavenge the wreck. They retrieve damaged phaser sniper rifles (Antori believes he can get one of them working again) and the shuttle's sensor logs, which they combine with Solarii communications logs to locate where Sam is being held in the caves beneath a Solarii-occupied ancient palace, near a downed warbird and a ramshackle Solarii city. They hear from Rejes who has reunited with Doctor Howard and is just outside the Solarii city. Rejes decides to mount a rescue effort before the Solarii re-establish communications. She reunites with Alex McKensey inside the city, and he managed to confirm the exact location of Sam, but the Solarii find and capture them before they can rescue her. Matan decides to try to use Sam as bait to lure Antori and Carlin away from the Solarii city and into a trap at an ancient monastery. He has Sam taken from the shuttlepod-cell with the excuse of preparing her for the Ritual of Fire. Rejes attempts to stop the Solarii from taking her but is killed, and Alex and Doctor Howard are imprisoned in the cell in Sam's place. Sam is unable to warn them about her escape plan before she is lead away, to the downed warbird which the Solarii have made partially operational. Sam acquires a traditional Japanese bow and is allowed to escape to an arid canyon south of the monastery, but Brother John and another Solarii team are sent to trap and kill her and anyone who should come to rescue her. Sam contacts Carlin, who immediately goes to rescue her friend, ignoring Antori's warnings and leaving him to continue to the Solarii city alone. She is ambushed by the Solarii, but with the help from Sam, she is able to escape into the canyon. Shortly afterward, they reach the monastery and are ambushed by Brother John and his party. Sam is stunned and Carlin receives a severe head injury and loses consciousness. However, the Solarii are prevented from killing her when the Oni attack and kill many of them. When Sam regains consciousness she finds herself in a room full of bodies, including several Solarii. She finds Carlin nearby and with her friend's help, manages to treat her and get her back on her feet. Sam and Carlin then escape the room before the Oni can return. In attempting to escape from the monastery, they find the remains of an unsuccessful Dominion assault on the monastery and discover an ancient tomb. They identify the remains in the tomb as belonging to Himiko, the first Sun Queen and find murals describing the process by which she chose her successor, starting with a fire ritual. Leaving the tomb, they meet a group of Solarii under Brother John who are also trying to escape the Oni-infested monastery. After a brief stand-off, the Starfleet officers and the Solarii agree to a temporary truce in order to help each other escape the Oni. Most of the Solarii are killed when a giant Oni general attacks them, but Carlin, Sam, and Brother John manage to make it to a covered bridge leading away from the monastery. While the Oni collapse the bridge, John uses his communicator to call for the Solarii to beam him out, leaving Sam and Carlin to fall alone. They manage to survive the fall, however, and wind up back outside the Solarii city. They sneak in through the sewer, intending to rescue Doctor Howard and Alex, who are still held prisoner, but Brother John and a group of Solarii under him attack. They take Sam from behind while she's up on a tower and separated from Carlin. They threaten to kill her unless Carlin surrenders, but Sam breaks free and manages to kill most of her captors. She then tackles Brother John and falls from the tower with him. They beam out at the last second, but Carlin is unaware of this and mourns Sam's loss. She is nearly killed by one of the surviving members of Brother John's party, but Antori shoots her attacker using a phaser sniper rifle he's set up on the ridge overlooking the city. He then gives her covering fire as she makes her way to and across the bridge that provides access to the Solarii palace and the caves beneath. Meanwhile, Sam is forced to strip and change into an ancient blood-stained kimono. She attempts to break free by using Brother John as a human shield, but Matan shoots him. Sam is then taken into the caverns and bound to a stake for the Ritual of Fire. Carlin arrives just in time to witness Father Matan ordering his men to burn Sam at the stake. She manages to kill the men, but the other Solarii present attack her, most notably the two Klingon brothers of Vamdar, who want revenge for his death. Matan stops them from beating her to death and then lights the fire beneath Sam himself. As the fire rises, a sudden gust of wind blows down into the caves and extinguishes the flames, saving Sam. Matan interprets this as a sign from Himiko that Sam is "the Chosen One" they've been seeking, who will free Himiko and all the Solarii by undergoing the Ascension Ritual in the Chamber of the Sun (which he is very close to finding, thanks to Doctor Mor). He has Sam taken to the throne room of the palace above while he gives the Klingon brothers permission to execute Carlin. The brothers bicker over how and where to kill Carlin, and as they fight she breaks free and escapes into a chasm, landing in an area the Solarii call the Pit: a prison where they starve new recruits into submission, often driving them to cannibalism and insanity in the process. Carlin comes into contact with several of the prisoners in the Pit, most of whom are cannibalistic and insane, but a recent human prisoner, the captain of a downed civilian transport who identifies himself as Crusoe. Carlin and Crusoe manage to escape the Pit by setting off a gas explosion and make their way to the chamber where Doctor Howard and Alex are being held. They release them from the shuttlepod just before the engines go off, slamming it into the wall and causing a chain reaction that ignites pockets of volatile gas throughout the palace. While Howard, Alex, and Crusoe use the explosions as an opportunity to escape, Carlin goes into the palace after Sam. Sam manages to break free just before she arrives and kills the Klingon brother who was guarding her. Carlin and Sam then run into Doctor Mor, who is saving his research from the fire. He promises to help them escape by distracting a guard, but when he returns Matan and a contingent of Solarii are with him. Sam and Carlin manage to escape from the burning palace, killing the final Klingon brother in the process. They run out onto the bridge hoping to escape the Solarii city and rejoin Antori and the others on the ridge opposite the city. However, Matan has beamed back to the warbird and uses its weapons to destroy the bridge in front of them. The newly-arrived Cluros then decloaks, beams up the Starfleet officers, and fires on the downed warbird, destroying it and wrecking the Solarii city, but not before Matan and an unknown number of other Solarii are able to escape. Aboard the Cluros, Carlin insists on being taken to see Ursan, the commanding officer of the ship. She believes that the polaric ion storms that brought down the rescue shuttle will bring down the bird-of-prey as well. She tries to persuade the Orions to land, but they try to flee the planet's atmosphere instead. Powerful polaric ion discharges disable the ship before it can leave, however, causing it to crash. Atria D'blae, the ship's handler for the Syndicate takes command and orders an emergency separation of the "head and neck" of the bird-of-prey, hoping for a survivable landing but the storm is too powerful. The ship crashes and Carlin is critically injured, going into cardiac arrest. Antori manages to revive her and carry her out of the wreckage but is then attacked by Matan and a group of Solarii. With the help of the Cluros' Nausicaan tactical officer, he manages to kill several of the Solarii, but then Matan kills the Nausicaan and throws his axe, intending to kill Carlin with it. Antori shields her with his body. Mortally wounded, he nonetheless manages to fight off the remaining Solarii, injuring Matan with a bolt from a Jem'Hadar rifle in the process. He and Carlin profess their love for each other and then he dies in her arms. Sam, Howard, Atria, and Ursan are the only other survivors from the command section of the Cluros. Alex is still alive but is trapped in the engineering section kilometers away with the ship's crazed and violent Gorn chief engineer. Sam and Doctor Howard find Carlin hugging Antori's body. Doctor Howard scans the remains and determines that the Drel symbiont can still be saved, but only by joining it immediately with the only available host: Carlin. Carlin eagerly volunteers, fully aware of the risks of the procedure. Atria and Ursan leave the Starfleet officers to complete the procedure they head to the wreck of the engineering section of the Cluros, in hopes of retrieving her personal shuttle and using it to escape the planet. By the time Carlin Drel awakens, Crusoe has found the group again and warns them that Solarii hunting parties are nearby. The survivors manage to elude the hunters by killing a few of them and sneaking into a cave where the Solarii are keeping a large number of partially-domesticated wolves. Howard administers an antitoxin to allow the party to pass through a verdenicine gas deposit safely, thus escaping into a network of caves that leads toward the engineering section. They arrive there the next morning to find another group of Solarii are in the process of attempting to salvage the engineering section. The Starfleet survivors join up with Atria and Ursan to defeat the Solarii and enter the wreck. Carlin and Howard search the engineering room for signs of Alex while the rest of the group goes to the upper deck, which has been converted into a hanger for Atria's shuttle. Carlin and Howard are attacked by the crazed Gorn, whom Carlin manages to kill. Meanwhile, Sam discovers Alex trapped upstairs in the rear of the hanger. While she tries to find a way to safely move him, the Atria discovers the hanger is sealed by a forcefield and Alex realizes that the only way to lower the forcefield is to overload the ship's emergency power generators by rupturing a plasma coolant line on the hanger deck. He volunteers to remain behind and this despite the fact that the plasma coolant will kill him. Sam won't hear of it and manages to devise a way to beam Alex out while rupturing the line with a phaser rigged with a deadman switch. He is successfully rescued, but his legs are badly injured. Aboard the Nautilus, Sokar is running out of options to rescue the away team when T'Paie proposes the dangerous idea of striking a subspace nexus discovered on the main island. While Sokar believes the plan is too risky, Admiral Quinn demands that Carlin be rescued and orders the Nautilus to carry out the attack once the arrives to assist them. Sam, Carlin, Howard, Alex, and Crusoe escape the wreck with Atria and Ursan aboard their shuttle and convince the Orions to go to an old Dominion research center where they believe they'll find clues about the polaric energy storms that are keeping them from leaving. They manage to infiltrate the facility despite a large Solarii presence there and retrieve audio logs indicating that the Dominion found a critical clue to the location of the Star of Yamatai (rumored to be the source of Himiko's powers) in the tomb of an ancient general. The survivors set out for the tomb and are joined by Doctor Mor, who claims to have escaped the Solarii but is secretly aiding Matan. Inside the tomb, Sam discovers that the general committed seppuku, and his suicide note coincides with events from the legend of Priestess Hoshi. Sam realizes that the legend must be true and that Himiko is a koh and is somehow able to pass herself from human host to human host, and that she is still alive. The Solarii then arrive and reveal that they want to make Sam Himiko's new host, freeing her from the planet. Sam is forced to surrender herself when a second group of Solarii attacks the shuttle with Alex, Howard, and Ursan trapped inside. Sam manages to conceal the general's tanto in her sash, planning to use it to destroy the Star of Yamatai once the Solarii bring her to the Chamber of the Sun. Carlin meanwhile talks the rest of the survivors into pursuing the Solarii in hopes of rescuing Sam and destroying the Star. The reach the monastery ahead of the Solarii but find out that the main force of Solarii heading there is only a diversion. Carlin orders the others to stay and hold the Solarii back for as long as they can while she goes after Matan, who is sneaking Sam in through a side entrance. Aboard the Nautilus, the risky rescue plan is suddenly called off by Fleet Admiral Yanishev, who reveals that the Endurance was among the ships destroyed in the Battle of Ganalda IV. Due to this defeat, he orders the Nautilus to abandon its stranded away teams and participate in patrols closer to the front lines. T'Paie manages to buy the Nautilus three more hours by pretending there is a problem with the warp drive, but after that, the ship must leave. Matan tricks Mor into acting as a diversion, killing him, and then slipping past the Oni with Sam. He takes Sam up to the Chamber of the Sun where he begins the Ascension Ritual, causing the corpse of the last Sun Queen to rise. Sam sees the Star of Yamatai on her neck and attempts to destroy it with the tanto, but Matan knocks it from her hand. Moments later, the koh begins to transfer itself into Sam's body. Sam and Himiko battle for control of her mind and Himiko's power, with Himiko revealing her memories and history as a non-corporeal being in the process. Meanwhile, Carlin sneaks into the monastery and defeats a giant Oni before scaling a cliff to the Chamber of the Sun, despite many near misses from lighting strikes. She fights and kills Matan and finds Sam still locked in mental combat with Himiko. She retrieves the tanto and uses it to destroy the Star of Yamatai, killing Himiko and setting Sam free. However, the death of Himiko reveals an overloading subspace nexus, which will shortly explode, releasing all the polaric energy that granted Himiko her powers. Sam is able to draw on Himiko's memories to beam herself and the other survivors to the hidden starship that Himiko used on her journeys from Yamatai to Earth. Despite the age and unfamiliarity of the starship, Sam is able to fly it off the planet before the polaric energy explosion destroys all life on the surface. The survivors then attempt to use the starship to escape the subspace shockwave from the explosion, but the nebula damages the ship's warp engines, crippling it. The Nautilus detects the crippled ship and manages to beam them off in time before warping safely out of the area. One month later, the Nautilus finally gets some down time after completing its patrol. While on station in the Gault system, the crew holds a memorial service for Antori Drel, Rejes Joslin, and Maiava. Before the service, Sokar meets Carlin and offers her the position of First Officer and the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Carlin accepts. During the reception, Sam sneaks down to the brig and frees Atria and Ursan, who were being held as prisoners of war, allowing them to escape to the Xarantine system with Crusoe. She then returns to the reception. Carlin is able to determine what she's done, but promises there will be no investigation, since she feels the Orions should have been freed as well for their role in helping them escape Yamatai. The pair of friends relieve the tension by exchanging gifts. Carlin gives Sam the tanto used on the Star of Yamatai, which is now the only surviving relic from the planet. Sam in exchange shares a bottle of Romulan ale with Carlin. They drink a toast to the friends they've lost and to themselves, the survivors of Yamatai. Epilogue An epilogue posted right after the end of the story consists of a secret communication between Section 31 agent Franklin Drake and T'Paie, who is revealed to also be working for Section 31. Drake approves of the escape of Atria and Ursan and expresses interest in Sam as a possible agent when he realizes she was the one to do this. He also reveals that Drel was an agent of Section 31 in a previous host but left the organization and that T'Paie is aboard the Nautilus in part to keep tabs on Drel. Drake and T'Paie also discuss giving a modified copy of the data gathered on polaric energy during the mission to the Tal'Shiar, in hopes they will try to reverse engineer the process and destroy one of their own facilities. Quotes Category:Fan fiction episodes Category:Fan fiction novels Category:Star Trek Online: Valkyries episodes